"
To the scattered band who, few and weak, are here and there withdrawn
from the thoroughfares of life, to commune together and to c?operate in
the grand movement of the age, the world comes in with scarce
dissembled sneer, and ironically says, "_If_ Association is really
this Messiah to the ages, this pledge of universal prosperity, of
overflowing wealth, then let it make these barren fields into gardens,
these thick growing woods into palaces, these stones into bread."
And all the while the shrewd, the rosy, sleek and full-fed world, with
title deeds in pocket and scrip and stock in hand, thinks of its
factories on rapid streams; its warehouses of three thousand dollars'
rent; its dividends at seven per cent half yearly; its iron-limbed and
tireless steeds, hurrying with the spoils of myriads of acres; its
carpeted, curtained, glowing, shining, pictured, sculptured, perfumed
homes. The victorious world, so confident and easy and jocular, so
beautiful in its own right, so wrapped about in kingly purple--how
strangely is it metamorphosed to the eyes of the child of God! Its
factories change into brothels; its rents to distress warrants; its
railroads to mighty fetters, binding industry in an inextricable net of
feudalism; from under the showy robes of its success, flutter the
unseemly rags of an ever-growing beggary; from garret and cellar of its
luxurious habitations, stare out the gaunt forms of haggard want; the
lash of the jailer, the gleam of swords, the glitter of bayonets, are
its garters and stars of nobility.
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